Modern communication systems allow individuals to stay in communication as they move about. The most notable device for this is the cellular telephone, which allows people to communicate verbally with each other. There is, however, a whole other range of communications that people use in their daily lives that are not as well developed for mobile use—the sending and receiving of data, such as, for example, over the Internet.
To address this need, modern communication systems include wireless devices that are capable of initiating data sessions through serving nodes that couple the devices to a network. The wireless devices may then receive data, such as, for example, stock quotes, advertisements, and/or e-mails, from various service providers.
In existing networks, when a wireless device moves from one location to another, a new wireless and/or data link may have to be established to service the device. While establishing a new wireless link may be accomplished quite readily, establishing a new data link may take significantly longer, which may result in a significant loss of data and/or annoyance to the user of the device.
Currently, there are two proposed solutions to this problem. One is to build serving nodes that can handle more data links, in an attempt to lower the probability that a wireless device will have to establish a data link to a different serving node. Another proposed solution is to have each serving node send information regarding the wireless sessions that it is managing to the other serving nodes. Accordingly, each serving node would know which serving node is managing a wireless session for the wireless device upon detecting a registration request from it.